ng to its use in Wales, "there is a Welsh tradition to
the effect that Shakespeare received his knowledge of the Cambrian
fairies from his friend Richard Price, son of Sir John Price, of the
Priory of Brecon." It is even claimed that Cwm Pwcca, or Puck Valley, a
part of the romantic glen of the Clydach, in Breconshire, is the
original scene of the "Midsummer-Night's Dream."[10]

[8] See Croker's "Fairy Legends of South of Ireland," 1862, p. 135.

[9] "Fairy Mythology," 1878, p. 316.

[10] Wirt Sikes's "British Goblins," 1880, p. 20.

Another of Puck's names was Robin Goodfellow, and one of the most
valuable illustrations we have of the "Midsummer-Night's Dream" is a
black-letter tract published in London, 1628, under the title of "Robin
Goodfellow: His Mad Pranks, and Merry Jests, full of honest mirth, and
is a fit medicine for melancholy."[11] Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps,[12]
speaking of Robin Goodfellow, says, "there can be no doubt that in the
time of Shakespeare the fairies held a more prominent position in our
popular literature than can be now concluded from the pieces on the
subject that have descended to us." The author of "Tarlton's News out of
Purgatory," printed in 1590, assures us that Robin Goodfellow was
"famosed in every old wives chronicle for his mad merry pranks;" and we
learn from "Henslowe's Diary" that Chettle was the writer of a drama on
the adventures of that "merry wanderer of the night." These have
disappeared; and time has dealt so harshly with the memory of poor Robin
that we might almost imagine his spirit was still leading us astray over
massive volumes of antiquity, in a delusive search after documents
forever lost; or, rather, perhaps, it is his punishment for the useless
journeys he has given our ancestors, misleading night-wanderers, "and
laughing at their harm."[13] He is mentioned by Drayton in his
"Nymphidia:"

"He meeteth Puck, which most men call
Hob-goblin, and on him doth fall," etc.,

"hob being the familiar or diminutive form of Robert and Robin, so that
Hobgoblin is equivalent to Robin the Goblin. _i. e._, Robin
Goodfellow."[14] Burton, in his "Anatomy of Melancholy," alludes to him
thus: "A bigger kinde there is of them, called with us hobgoblins and
Robin Goodfellows, that would, in superstitious times, grinde corne for
a mess of milk, cut wood, or do any manner of drudgery work." Under his
name of Robin Goodfellow, Puck is well characterized in Jonson's